09 February 2010   

An alarming vision of how the world will look after the oil runs out — but also of a crucial role for organic farming — has been given by a leading ‘peak oil’ expert.

Richard Heinberg, one of the world's leading experts on oil reserves, used last week’s Soil Association Lady Eve Balfour Lecture to warn that the lives of billions of people are threatened by a food crisis caused by our dependence on dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

Peak oil, explained Heinberg, is simply the point at which global oil reserves reach their maximum output and start to decline. Some experts believe we have already reached peak oil, others say it is 10 or 20 years off.

Heinberg claimed that a combination of factors — higher oil prices, the loss of farmland to biofuel crops, climate change and the loss of natural resources — exacerbated by population growth, would lead to an unprecedented food shortage.

The only way to avert a global food crisis, he said, was a planned and swift reduction in the use of fossil fuel use and a switch to organic or other zero petro-chemical input farming systems.

He said: “Climate change is undoubtedly the biggest threat to mankind ever seen. But in the short-term, peak oil is going to hit economies and communities harder and faster. If we don’t do anything to deal with our addiction to oil over the next few years, economies will be in chaos and tatters — and they won’t be in a position to manage the huge challenges that confront us globally.

“The transition away from oil is inevitable. And it’s going to lead to huge changes in our food production systems. The critical thing is that we manage and plan the transition. This is an unavoidable, immediate, and immense challenge that will call for unprecedented levels of creativity at all levels of society.

“A hundred years from now, everyone will be eating what we today would define as organic food, whether or not we act.

“But what we do now will determine how many will be eating, what state of health will be enjoyed by those future generations, and whether they will live in a ruined cinder of a world, or one that is in the process of being renewed and replenished.”